Romulus
by Dear Aunt Elladora
Summary: Severus goes to Remus looking for answers and hoping to find angry resentment. Remus is tranquilly pessimistic. Somewhere in the mix of haggard conversation they come to an understanding. Not slash, post the death of Sirius, short.


Remus finds him, perched, on the foot of the bed that belongs to Remus. One would laugh at how bird-like he looks, peering out over his bent to crooked large nose. Another would think he's the wounded lover of Remus, crawling into the bed he'd called home though it didn't belong to him.

Remus isn't one of those people.

He looks up at Remus and sighs through his hands, sifting them over his pasty pale features. Remus thinks he's never looked so sick in his life, even when he was dangling upside down and wearing gray underpants. And that's not even funny, not now, not really ever.

He slides his hand through the hair that adds to the permanent mockery that trails behind the professor, but Remus really doubts he cares. That's one of the many things he admires about this man sitting intruding into his bedroom.

"Sheilding your ears, Severus, will not make the words easier to hear," he says calmly, reserved almost. Severus looks up at Remus again, bitterly removing his hands from his face and placing them in his back.

"So it's true, then?" he says, and Remus can see all the bones of his now-curved spine through the thin, black robes. An inky abyss Severus so often wraps himself in, a pair of black robes that aren't like everyone elses. While many think he looks at home in the dank colored attire, Remus thinks they strangle him.

"Of course," Remus says, sliding down against the closed door, his adam's apple bobbing out of his thin neck as he rests the crown of his head on the door.

"I didn't want to believe it," Severus assures him, his voice still hollow.

"I didn't think you did. No matter how much you hated him." Remus says, his tired brown eyes tracing a hole in the celieng.

Snape is angry, his black eyes glittering with an all too common malice. In Remus's face, Severus can still see the little boy that had a five-o-clock shadow at twelve, gray hairs by thirteen. The same boy who pushed him out of the way countless times to avert James and Sirius from torturing him.

"Be angry, Lupin," Severus hisses through his teeth, "Do something bitter. Say something cold. Don't sit there and treat it like someone just pulled your hair."

Remus looks down from the celieng and allows his eyes to register on the grown man in front him. Shadows of the same Snape cast all about his features, a man who grew up trying to portray a foreboding prescense yet, inside, knew the lightest sides of himself but was too stubborn to show them. Anger flicks through Remus's eyes now, but not in the same way. A glimmer of mad, a spark of hostility - there for a moment before fading into the depth of the numb, blank brown.

"There would be no point."

"How dare you. Even a jerk like Black, who assumed he was your best friend, deserves an ounce of respect by you showing the least dislike of death," Severus snarls at the seated man.

"Funny, is it, how I'm the werewolf and you're the one snarling and hissing like an angry cat. The thing is, I can't get angry anymore. I've got nothing to get angry about. That's the very point, Severus, I've got nothing."

Severus stands, "You have more than you know."

Remus stands as well, looking the enemy in the eye. Severus has shared the emotions of the aged man in front him, yet lacks sympathy. Remus can read Severus's face as if it were a book in plaintext, but to anyone else it would look as blank as a whitewashed wall.

Remus isn't one of those people.

Severus extends and hand to Remus, and Remus looks down on it and then back to Snape. He doesn't want to play games anymore, and if Severus wants to be there for him, he should say it. But Remus knows Severus would never do anything of the sort, so Remus shows his knowledge of what Snape has hinted at quite suprisingly.

Severus is at a loss when Remus holds his shoulders in a breif hug, but does what he knows is right - hugs back.

**Author's note: **right. weird. I know. I'm not sure what came over me. Actually, I do. Lilly Evans and how touched she would have been by this moment. And donnaTellaMarks's profile. Not really sure why, however. And insomnia. Heavy, heavy insomnia on my part. The title is latin, o'course, I prolly mispelled it. In Greek myth, Remus and Romulous were brothers raised by a wolf (joyous foreshadowing, Jo Rowling) and Romulous killed Remus to found Rome. I did that because Snape is rather like a brother to Remus... that sounds odd. Out Of Character is very, very fun.

_**Review, please?**_


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